Fell Paradise
by Etched In Fire
Summary: 15 BLW - Screaming into the void solves nothing... until the void answers back. Doomed to a slow death on Venom, Andross ponders where it all went wrong... and meets someone rather unexpected.


**FELL PARADISE**

Isolation was silence, like the emptiness of space itself. But it deafened him nonetheless, its high-pitched ring declaring his failures to him one painstaking hour after the next. He did not need their choir, knowing the weight of his sins all on his own.

Distantly, he remembered how the clanking of machinery sounded. The buzz of apprentices about his laboratory, scattering about like rats in a barn. Scribbling down their notes, they all looked the same. They all had been the same to him; pawns in his merciless game. But one of them had been different. Twinkling like peridot illuminated by heavenly light, she had been his silent pride and joy. He was not sure when it had happened, when she had become more than an assistant and more than just a friend. But over the years of their work together, he had found himself taken by even the way she breathed.

She was dead now.

The thought sent him into a maddened rage, and he found his fist implanted into the nearest stone, red droplets coursing between his fingers. A blink or two later, and the pain came like little pretty laces through his knuckles and into his wrist.

 _I am dying,_ he thought to himself, his left eyelid spasming. He watched the red flow like tiny waterfalls to the ground, and gave a small laugh. Never had he been a man of strength or power—only a disciple of the mind. _Science is my religion. I am a follower of logic. A seeker of knowledge._ But some had disagreed. Some had wanted him dead and now, he was here in his fell paradise, a dusted and warped grave.

He breathed in the toxic air, letting it flow into his lungs, savoring its bitter taste. It would be a slow death. It would be agonizing. The bearded man knew all of these things, and breathed in deeper. _It was torture the moment she died. The moment that bomb went off, taking her from me._ Her smile—eradicated. The curves of her hips—destroyed. Her laugh in the morning sun—never to be seen again. A life without her was meaningless.

"It's my fault," he wailed to the nothingness of the wasteland, with naught but stones and dying trees to see him weep bitterly. "It's my fault, my fault… my fault…" He breathed in the fumes that would destroy him from the inside-out. Deeper and deeper, drinking the venom that the cursed planet was named after.

 _It was supposed to be HIM! It was never supposed to be her…_

He had craved her for too long, planting seeds of lust and madness into his mind. Falling for Vixy Reinard-McCloud had been the prologue to his downfall. He just wished he had been wise enough to see it all of those years ago. But now the populace was demanding his blood and they would have it. He was the terrorist they had sought and through her death, the damned dogs had found everything. The illegal weapons and the teleportation device—the one that Pepper had made him work on, the one that Pepper would later condemn him for, spinning the story in his favor. The public would ever agree with their war hero.

They did not even permit him to go to the funeral. He would have done anything to see her again, even if it was just bone and ash. He was certain they were still beautiful. Nothing about her could have been ugly, not even in death. But he was alone, with naught but Venom's atmosphere to consume him slowly. He sat in his isolation, back to the stones that mocked his tears with their silence, gazing at the distant Lylat with a curse in his breath.

He thought of his family, of his poor sister Marlene and the scars on her arms and legs from her lover turned abuser. He thought of the way she still trembled when she walked down the street and someone so much as tossed her a glance. He thought of Andrew, shivering and sobbing during his trial, dressed head-to-toe in a black suit that made him look so much like his father. But Andross could not bring himself to say those words to the boy, knowing it would do more harm than good. He swelled with pride when he thought of his nephew, a stinging tear trickling down his face.

Everything had been thrown away in Vixy's name. Everything for his love. Everything, including the family he had tried to foster and grow despite the odds and prejudice they faced.

"Dr. Andross," he murmured, listening to it ring in the air. A fitting name it had been. He had been a doctor to some, a murderer to others… but a paragon of science, he would forever remain, even if the Cornerian officials refused to acknowledge his work, even if he would go down in the history books as a criminal. His nails dug into his brow as he thought, giving a small wheeze. Venom would surely kill him within a month's time—as it had to all of the others who had tried to settle it. _My bones will turn to ash here. And I will be a ghost. I deserved so much more…_ But it was his fault she was dead. His fault… His fault… His—

A whisper alerted him, and the ape opened a great hazel eye to look at its origin. "Who goes there?" He demanded hoarsely, his bushy brows furrowed. "Show yourself!"

But there were only shadows about him—shadows and stone. They did not whisper, but the air itself _did_. A thousand voices tickled his ears as the wind slithered by, bringing with it a chill that frightened even the murderer. It was a tongue he did not understand—a chant of questions that were alien to him. The doctor rose to his feet gradually, eyes flitting about the flatlands to find it devoid of life though his senses told him otherwise. He could feel them in the air, their potency and their life.

 _"Nxe aj…"_

 _"Nxo teoj kxo wheidt rcoot?"_

 _"Te oei bden nxoho oei uho?"_

 _"Kxaj aj ud udsaodk cudt…"_

"I cannot understand you!" He shrieked at the wind, his chipped nails digging into his own palms as he made a set of desperate fists. "Answer me! Who are you? W-where… where are you?"

 _"No uho xoho udt kxoho…"_

 _"Ad toukx udt cavo…"_

 _"Nuksxadw udt nuakadw…"_

"What… what are you saying?" He strained to understand, to listen. Their voices grew into a song, its lyrics slowly becoming known in his heart in ways he could not fathom, could not describe. He listened as their words rose and fell like wind and water upon stone until they faded into nothingness. Andross listened intently for them to come back, feeling his heart quicken with swelling fear.

 _No… No, come back! Come back, I need to speak with you! I don't want to be alone… I don't want to die like this…_

"C-come back…! No, please… please come back… My… My name is Gestalt. Gestalt Andross of Corneria. Who are you?" Nothing replied back and he felt his fear bubble and broil into seething anger. His fangs bared themselves as he yelled, bloodshot eyes widened as far as they could go. "Answer me! Please…"

A single sentence broke the chorus's silence, spoken in perfect modern Lylatian.

 _"Where did all the people go?"_

The question confused him; Andross could not recall anyone settling the planet of Venom for decades. It had been deemed a hostile environment, and, during the Era of Colonization, Corneria had blacklisted it as a viable destination. Instead, the civilians had settled Macbeth and Eladard, as well as the frontier planet of Katina. Venom was to become a death sentence for the cruelest of criminals. _And that is why I am here. I am here to die. So what do I fear from ghosts in the wind?_

"There are no people. There is only me. I have come here to die," Andross said mournfully.

 _"No. You have come here to live."_

A shadow grew from the rocks, manifesting in the sky above him. And for the first time in his existence, the great towering Gestalt Andross felt as small as a crying babe, facing death itself on a planet that knew no mercy. He saw them manifest—wisps of air and soft lavender light, bent and turned into ancient faces, masks that looked both wise and terrifying. Their unblinking eyes fell upon him with judgment and scrutiny, their congress uttered in their melodic chant.

 _"Cornerus…"_

 _"Maccoddauj fujk…"_

 _"Aleminach vuccj udt hajoj uwuad…"_

"W-what are you saying?" he beseeched them, reaching his trembling hands towards the nearest phantom of light. His throat screamed for water, each word raking out of his mouth with agony. "T-tell me! Tell me…"

" _Androsi_ ," a voice like honey fell over his ears. " _Do you know where you are?_ "

"V-Venom… They called it Venom…" Andross rasped.

" _A moniker for the ignorant_ ," the voice remarked, echoing within his ears. His green-flecked eyes moved about, looking at the ghosts that danced about him. " _We shall show you. But first… first you must breathe_."

A tendril of light reached from the masked creature, brushing back the salt-toned strands of his hair, wet with sweat and grime. His skin, flecked from age and stress, felt the wash of Lylat's rays and the sanctity of the specter's touch. With some strain, he inhaled, the tendril enveloping him and lining his broken torso with a veil of lavender glow. It flooded his lungs, cleansing him of the impurities he did not know he had. It wrapped around his mind, constricting it like a boa. His next breath was a choked gasp as he felt life flicker back into his bones, into his fingers. The bleeding in his hand had stopped, the wound sealed perfectly.

"How…?" He marveled with childish wonder, having thought he had seen everything there was to see in the world.

" _Let us show you_ ," the tendril tucked beneath his chin, lifting it. " _What you were meant to be."_

And, at the peak of his desperation, knowing there was nothing left to lose, Andross relented, opening his heart open to the specter. In turn, it opened his eyes, flooding them with the light of burning meteors, of the feeling of free flight among the stars, of the chant of immortality. He saw what it was like to behold the rise and fall of kingdoms, their bones and ruins withered by time's merciless hand, forgotten over ages. He saw the ones that drifted about him—whole and hale in centuries past, before even the dogs had invaded Corneria, stealing land that did not belong to them, forcing the rightful owners to assimilate, destroying any semblance of culture they did not approve of…

 _History is ever written by the victors._

But ghosts remained on the cursed planet of Venom, weeping eternally for their descendants that had fallen, losing their way, losing themselves to the tides of chaos and change. Blood stayed the same, no matter how many cycles around Lylat the planet took. Blood was strength and his heritage would be his destiny. Andross saw the rain of fire that would consume the ancient Cornerus tribe, his ancestors, and watched their kingdoms turn to ash.

 _But who ever said the victors were right?_

Yet even as he watched them die, he felt their strength. He felt their transcendence. The cosmos lay before his eyes, a throne waiting for its liege. It was empty. It had been empty for a million lifetimes. It beckoned to him and he understood why the ghosts had sought him out.

With tears streaming down his face, he laughed. He laughed until it became shrieks of glee. Madness and glee overtook him until he could breathe no more, rasping on the ground and shivering with excitement. His fists struck the earth and he could feel the tremble of fate in the air.

 _Rise and fall and rise again…_

"I will do it," he whispered to the ghosts around him, the ancient creatures who had seen millennia pass by like a flicker. "I will avenge you all." It was a vow that would see thousands killed. A vow stained red with blood.


End file.
